Head-Dunk
He had tears in his eyes as he stood in front of the dingy mirror of the men’s restroom of El Rey, one of twenty or so Mexican restaurants in my crummy hometown. Stepping into this vulnerable moment—the smell was of urinal blocks and refried beans—was like participating in one of those psychology experiments I’d signed up for during my first year at university. I would ignore him, ignore his predicament, or I wouldn’t. Either choice would yield data to be analyzed and, down the road, some conclusions about human behavior. Water trailed across the oily tiles from the bathroom stall to the sinks. His head was soaked, and his lip was split. Outsiders can have it rough in our little mining town.
I invited him to the all-night diner a half mile further along Highway 60. The evening crowd was in play, the truck drivers and the sunburnt lake-goers in loose t-shirts and sawed-off jeans. Everyone was squinting because of the buzzy lights and the extreme air conditioning that kept the Arizona heat at bay. The café was a sort of office for me. Several evenings a week, some afternoons too, I’d sit in one of the booths to drink watery coffee and plan the local history tours that I ran through the Chamber of Commerce.
The waitresses wore their make-up thick and their hair heaped into styles that wouldn’t have been out of place in photos of miners’ wives at the half-century. Janie brought some cotton swabs and a bottle of antiseptic with our coffee and pecan pie. “Least tell me it was for love,” she said. He shook his head with an ambiguous side-to-side and excused himself to clean up.
“Be careful,” I said. “One head-dunk’s enough for tonight, no?” He didn’t correct my assumption.
Now he was gingerly working the pecan pie over his engorged lip, forkful by forkful. “There’s the old courthouse tour. There’s the art gallery tour. There’s the historic home tour, normal and haunted. The former brothels tend to be the biggest draw. Sometimes the copper mines let us in.” On and on I went, as if giving one of my woefully infrequent tours. I wasn’t used to talking so much, and maybe that’s why the enchilada sauce kept repeating on me.
He was open and relaxed, delicate and precise. His clean-cut manners and muscular confidence were appealing. He spoke little but was attentive even when he shifted his gaze out the glass front of the diner toward his Subaru and the small U-Haul trailer to which it was hitched. It was a cliché, he said, but he had to try—try meaning a move from Las Cruces to LA. When we were finished with dessert, he asked if I intended to invite him home for the night or if he was going to push on another few hours.
I wasn’t surprised. I’d already fantasized about sucking him off in his Subaru. But for better or worse, my fantasies always curdle the second I become aware of them as fantasies. Besides, sucking him off in his Subaru would have been, well, anticlimactic. I lied about a boyfriend and a move back in with my parents after university. Again that ambiguous side-to-side.
Small towns can be lonely, too. If you’re a bit shy and don’t know anyone like you, aside from the butch librarian who was far too strict about the fines for late DVDs (and what kind of solace would she have been in any case?), my crummy town can be as lonely as any city. Loneliness is a vacuum, and I was vanishing into it face-first.
I live in a small adobe house with a zinc roof in the prickly hills above the highway; it wouldn’t merit being on a tour of any sort. As I was walking home he was driving into the night, the weight of desire not dragging him down but pushing him onward. People who do, who act and react, who take part and take risks, are the ones to set and keep stories in motion, I thought. Otherwise momentum is lost, the house remains empty, and it hardly matters if you flick on the lights.
I invited him to the all-night diner a half mile further along Highway 60. The evening crowd was in play, the truck drivers and the sunburnt lake-goers in loose t-shirts and sawed-off jeans. Everyone was squinting because of the buzzy lights and the extreme air conditioning that kept the Arizona heat at bay. The café was a sort of office for me. Several evenings a week, some afternoons too, I’d sit in one of the booths to drink watery coffee and plan the local history tours that I ran through the Chamber of Commerce.
The waitresses wore their make-up thick and their hair heaped into styles that wouldn’t have been out of place in photos of miners’ wives at the half-century. Janie brought some cotton swabs and a bottle of antiseptic with our coffee and pecan pie. “Least tell me it was for love,” she said. He shook his head with an ambiguous side-to-side and excused himself to clean up.
“Be careful,” I said. “One head-dunk’s enough for tonight, no?” He didn’t correct my assumption.
Now he was gingerly working the pecan pie over his engorged lip, forkful by forkful. “There’s the old courthouse tour. There’s the art gallery tour. There’s the historic home tour, normal and haunted. The former brothels tend to be the biggest draw. Sometimes the copper mines let us in.” On and on I went, as if giving one of my woefully infrequent tours. I wasn’t used to talking so much, and maybe that’s why the enchilada sauce kept repeating on me.
He was open and relaxed, delicate and precise. His clean-cut manners and muscular confidence were appealing. He spoke little but was attentive even when he shifted his gaze out the glass front of the diner toward his Subaru and the small U-Haul trailer to which it was hitched. It was a cliché, he said, but he had to try—try meaning a move from Las Cruces to LA. When we were finished with dessert, he asked if I intended to invite him home for the night or if he was going to push on another few hours.
I wasn’t surprised. I’d already fantasized about sucking him off in his Subaru. But for better or worse, my fantasies always curdle the second I become aware of them as fantasies. Besides, sucking him off in his Subaru would have been, well, anticlimactic. I lied about a boyfriend and a move back in with my parents after university. Again that ambiguous side-to-side.
Small towns can be lonely, too. If you’re a bit shy and don’t know anyone like you, aside from the butch librarian who was far too strict about the fines for late DVDs (and what kind of solace would she have been in any case?), my crummy town can be as lonely as any city. Loneliness is a vacuum, and I was vanishing into it face-first.
I live in a small adobe house with a zinc roof in the prickly hills above the highway; it wouldn’t merit being on a tour of any sort. As I was walking home he was driving into the night, the weight of desire not dragging him down but pushing him onward. People who do, who act and react, who take part and take risks, are the ones to set and keep stories in motion, I thought. Otherwise momentum is lost, the house remains empty, and it hardly matters if you flick on the lights.
Michael Aliprandini is a freelance editor and writer resident in Italy. His short stories and essays have appeared in several publications, including Columbia Journal, Nude Bruce Review, Queen Mob's Tea House, and Counterclock. He is assistant editor for Litro Magazine.
